Cooperative Spectrum Sensing: A New Approach for Minimum Interference and Maximum Utilisation

Cooperative spectrum sensing is a widely studied topic in cognitive radio, which is capable of improving the detection accuracy of the primary channel activities. In cooperative spectrum sensing, secondary users' observations are sent to a common receiver, the Fusion Centre (FC), to obtain a better understanding and decision about the state of the primary channel. This work, however, investigates how these observations of the secondary users can efficiently be exploited in such a way that minimises the collision ratio between the secondary and the primary users and at the same time maximises the exploitation of the unused frequency spectrum. As a result, a simple yet efficient approach is proposed for cooperative spectrum sensing, which, to the best of the authors' knowledge, has not been covered in the literature. This approach outperforms the conventional approach of cooperative spectrum sensing for reducing the interference and increasing the utilisation of the unused frequency spectrum in cognitive radio systems.